Friday, February 11, 2011

Rangers forever, Samurai whenever

So Power Rangers Samurai aired a few days ago. My thoughts? It was cheesy, poorly acted, full of puns, catchy corny music, and had retouched Sentai footage. Yup this is Power Rangers alright. Lots of nostalgia going for this now that Saban is back in the game. I do like how its extremely close to its Japanese counterpart as well with the exception of a few characters. Some of the changes I think were pretty dumb looking like the new morphers and the Zord piloting suits, but hey anything to sell toys right? Although I hated how they looked at first but in the episode itself the Zord piloting suits didn't look too bad. One little thing I thought was cool is that they changed the kanji for the origami beasts. In the Japanese version the Shinkengers wrote the kanji for Big on their origami beasts to make them grow, in Samurai here they write the kanji for Super, since they gain new forms as well as giant Zords.

But the BIGGEST issue is that Nick randomly aired the third episode as the premier instead of the first episode. Why? Shit made no sense. Are they trying to go for a TV movie down the line or something?

I'm only guessing its the third episode too since it was a very close adaptation of the third episode of Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, its Japanese counter part. Speaking of which I did a few shot comparisons.

Obligatory training sequence

Obligatory training sequence

Jayden informs Mike on reading your opponent

Takeru scolds Chiaki for being lazy and tells him
to start dodging attacks

Samurai is actually really close to Shinkenger, the only thing different is the characters with the exception of Jayden. Besides a direct adaptation of Shinkenger with nothing different would be boring.

I would have loved for this show to be on TV when I was a kid. Honestly I think that it's about the same acting/storyline quality as the original series. It just seems cheesier because we got older and now realize what good TV is.